Dawn of the Beast

At last, from all the dross cheap horror comes a fun, well-acted, well-scripted horror film. It is probably 1 out of every 20 of these cheap independent films worth watching. This is a good, fun romp. It has good characters, gory practical effects, fun moments, people you like, and a beginning, middle and a good end(someone survives) and no attempt to push a sequel.

Very, very basic horror movie with too much ideas and ambitions and not enough money nor competence. There is too many different monsters which make the result very messy. They probably had not enough money so they shot most of the movie indoors or in the woods, especially in the woods in the night. The result is not scary, just very messy and somehow bizarre. The movie could be way better if the authors focused on just one storyline, instead of trying to build multiple lines that even do not connect at times. It feels more like a mashup of at least two different movies, maybe even three movies at the same time. As a whole this simply does not work, because it jumps here and there. In the end it is confusing but not scary.

In summary, a group of older students go on a field trip in search of Big Foot. Sounds straight forward enough but Dawn of the Beast is a very busy movie. There are monsters, cannibals, zombies, terrified students and, several sub-plots including a romance of sorts and an abduction. Oh, and there might or might be a vampire / zombie as well. The character in question certainly exhibits some vampire like traits.

It's a B movie which gets cracking almost from-the-get-go. Once it would have made great drive-in material though it's gore quotient would have made it a stand-out. It's not especially gory by todays standards but it certainly is compared to the days when William Castle ruled the world of window mounted speakers.

It is no great secret, but the film is dripping with Wendigos. Being Australian, I had to look them up. I discovered there is a psychosis called Wendigo psychosis. It is a fear of developing a lust for human flesh or becoming a cannibal. It pretty much sums up the film - fear, experienced by the cast if not always the viewer, cannibalism and, a smattering of gore.

In the end it comes down to a battle between monsters, but an awful lot of stupid decisions are made by the cast of characters before, and after, this. It is difficult to pick a stand-out among the cast. All are adequate, none are particularly brilliant. Perhaps they weren't expected to be. In these days of gender equity, it is nice to see a scream queen and a scream king in competition.

The real stand out is Jared Balog who is responsible for some of the monsters' make-up and I'm guessing the gore and entrails.

Production values are OK. (I suspect there wasn't a huge budget.) Anna Shields' script is also OK, the cast are suitably tongue in cheek and the monsters are quite good. Director, Bruce Wemple, keeps things jollying along.

Dawn of the Beast is OK in its own terms. It's a movie for a few mates (girls are mates too), a few beers and a big bowl of corn chips.

I liked it, which I thought I wouldn't but glad I kept watching. Well worth the watch.

Well, "Dawn of the Beast" wasn't exactly a grand experience within the horror genre. Sure, the movie was watchable, but it just didn't pack enough punch to be an outstanding horror movie.

And why is that? Well, because the storyline was actually so simplistic that it was sort of becoming boring to watch. The writer, Anna Shields, just didn't offer enough of anything overly interesting or exciting to the audience, which ultimately made for a rather mundane experience. Not to mention predictable as well.

I suppose that director Bruce Wemple was making due with the limitations imposed by an inferior storyline and script. You can't make diamonds out of water after all.

For a horror movie then "Dawn of the Beast" was just a very forgettable movie. I hadn't heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it. And I can honestly say that this is not a horror movie that I will ever be watching again, as the movie failed to provide proper entertainment the first time around.

The characters in the movie were not properly detailed or fleshed out, which meant that I didn't really invest any emotions to them, nor did I care whenever they were killed. It should be said, though, that the acting performances in the movie were adequate, but the actors and actresses were just severely hindered by wooden caricature characters.

It should be noted though, that the wendigo and the creatures that followed the wendigo around were actually rather interesting and nicely enough made. They definitely made the movie bearable to watch. And I do like the way that they were always skulking about just at the periphery of the grounds. Now, as for the sasquatch - or bigfoot - well, that was not nearly as interesting as the wendigo and its creatures. Sure, it was watchable, but no, it just didn't bring as much satisfaction for a horror viewer as the other creatures did.

I managed to sit through this 2021 movie, and it is not an overly great movie. Sure, it was watchable, but hardly outstanding or memorable. My rating of "Dawn of the Beast" lands on a four out of ten stars.